Unhealthy/Gross foods growing up

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  • sgt1372
    sgt1372 Posts: 3,971 Member
    edited April 2018
    Not gross but certainly unhealthy if eaten to excess.

    Use to love eating Hostess chocolate cupcakes.

    Wasn't a big Twinkies fan but loved peeling the frosting off of the cupcakes and eating them separately; the filling was good too. Haven't had another one in decades.

    Use to like Oreos too; mainly splitting them apart and eating the filling. Haven't one of those in as many years either.

    No desire eat either again BTW.
  • beaglady
    beaglady Posts: 1,362 Member
    edited April 2018
    I almost forgot about ‘ham’ salad. It was actually made with ground up bologna in place of ham. My mom would clamp a grinder to the counter and crank away. It also had sweet pickles and onions ground up, all held together with mayonnaise.

    This was supposed to be a special treat for sandwiches. I hated all the ingredients both separately and combined. Shudder!
  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,443 Member
    beaglady wrote: »
    I almost forgot about ‘ham’ salad. It was actually made with ground up bologna in place of ham. My mom would clamp a grinder to the counter and crank away. It also had sweet pickles and onions ground up, all held together with mayonnaise.

    This was supposed to be a special treat for sandwiches. I hated all the ingredients both separately and combined. Shudder!

    That sounds shudder-worthy. :#
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,742 Member
    beaglady wrote: »
    I almost forgot about ‘ham’ salad. It was actually made with ground up bologna in place of ham. My mom would clamp a grinder to the counter and crank away. It also had sweet pickles and onions ground up, all held together with mayonnaise.

    This was supposed to be a special treat for sandwiches. I hated all the ingredients both separately and combined. Shudder!

    That sounds shudder-worthy. :#

    It certainly does sound shudder-worthy! I worked in a supermarket during college and my friend in the meat department told me their ham salad was just a mix of all sorts of meats with pink/red dye added and a powdered ham flavoring. :o We sold a ton of that ham salad. On the label it said "may contain" with a big list...but I'm sure people assumed it was like 90% pure ham! Especially in those days (1990s)!
  • OhMsDiva
    OhMsDiva Posts: 1,074 Member
    ereck44 wrote: »
    I remember eating braunsweiger sandwiches, meat between 2 saltines...not sure if it is goose liver or pork. It's actually delicious. My dad loved pickled pigs feet. When he opened the jar, I had to leave the table....felt like vomiting. The only organ meat we ate was liver. Mom cooked it or rather overcooked it once a month. It was hard and black like the soles of one's shoes.

    Wow. That sounds appetizing...Not
  • MonkeyMel21
    MonkeyMel21 Posts: 2,388 Member
    I would have a bowl of rice crispies, pour an indeterminate amount of sugar over the whole bowl, eat the cereal then use my spoon to scoop the piles of excess sugar in to my mouth.
  • ereck44
    ereck44 Posts: 1,170 Member
    My mom grew up in the depression days and her best friend grew up on a farm. When they butchered a hog, she said that they utilized all of it in some type of meat except the "squeal"
    The only cake my mom baked was out of a box....add egg and water. They were okay...not great.
    The first time I had ham salad sandwiches was in high school in the cafeteria. The first sandwich was okay, and the more of those sandwiches I ate.....gross! As I remember it was pink, and seemed to heavy on the mayo.
    Also ate my first peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the high school cafeteria....I always thought that was a weird combination. It was a white bread sandwich and consistency had to pry it off the roof of my mouth.

    Ahhhh....the memories.
  • dsboohead
    dsboohead Posts: 1,900 Member
    Pickled pigs feet on Thursday nites when dad got paid.....fried bologna sandwiches....cans of Vienna sausage.....saltine cracker cereal with tons of sugar......beef tongue out of the pressure cooker.
    Canned mixed vegetables,drained and mayo mixed in and called it salad :s
  • madwells1
    madwells1 Posts: 510 Member
    dsboohead wrote: »
    Pickled pigs feet.....fried bologna sandwiches..........beef tongue out of the pressure cooker.... :s


    Totally nailed my childhood right there. Add in some head cheese sandwiches instead of bolonga (think whole head of some farm animal boiling on stove and gelatinizing in bread pans) and this is why I have been in therapy for years!!
  • dsboohead
    dsboohead Posts: 1,900 Member
    madwells1 wrote: »
    dsboohead wrote: »
    Pickled pigs feet.....fried bologna sandwiches..........beef tongue out of the pressure cooker.... :s


    Totally nailed my childhood right there. Add in some head cheese sandwiches instead of bolonga (think whole head of some farm animal boiling on stove and gelatinizing in bread pans) and this is why I have been in therapy for years!!

    And I wanted to add headcheese too. So many don't know what it is. What years were you in that food era?
  • crazykatlady820
    crazykatlady820 Posts: 301 Member
    We were really poor, so my parents had to get inventive sometimes. We had a side dish they made several nights a week. It was one of those packets of ramen noodles, but instead of making it a soup they would drain the water, put in some margarine, and then the seasoning packet. So, it became like a noodle side. It actually wasn’t the worst tasting thing ever, but as an adult I do not like ramen noodles (even with the broth).
  • Verity1111
    Verity1111 Posts: 3,309 Member
    edited April 2018
    af240 wrote: »
    The sugar post currently on the front page got me thinking it could be fun to start a new thread to share all the unhealthy and gross foods you had as a kid, that you now look back and shake your head at (or still have as an indulgence, we're not here to judge lol). I'm sure this has been done before, but it's still fun to share...

    We had "bread and butter" with spaghetti which was just a slice of untoasted wonder/white bread with a generous slather of butter on top. It was my favorite meal as a kid just for that bread lol I know this isn't very far from garlic bread/toast, but the thought of just plain untoasted white bread makes me want to gag!

    My Mimi would make me sugar grapes, which was just regular grapes wetted and rolled in sugar, as if they aren't sweet enough already lol. But it was "our thing" and I always asked her to make them for me when we would go visit.

    Mine are pretty tame haha

    I still love butter bread and pasta. No regrets here lol. I'm told I ate raw meat as a toddler. I'm a vegetarian.
  • kellyw4444
    kellyw4444 Posts: 60 Member
    My Mom was a great cook and believed in making things from scratch. We were also quite poor growing up so we rarely ate out or bought convenience foods. That being said, I remember my brother eating ketchup sandwiches and sandwich spread sandwiches (which was like mayo with relish in it). Not a lot of protein - which was expensive. I also remember cinnamon toast and lots of white bread. To this day, my Dad only eats white bread.

    My Dad is from St. John's, Newfoundland (east coast of Canada - next stop is Ireland) and we ate some foods that my friends had never heard of: boiled lima beans with salt pork and boiled potatoes; Jig's Dinner - which was boiled everything (cabbage, potatoes, turnip, carrots) with peas pudding (dried peas boiled in a cheesecloth bag in the water with all the boiled veggies and meat) and salt beef. Salt beef (beef brisket preserved in salt brine) is actually my kids' favorite and we have it every Christmas, along with turkey and all the fixings. And my Dad makes salt beef hash (so much better than corned beef hash) with all the leftovers every Boxing Day.
  • Verity1111
    Verity1111 Posts: 3,309 Member
    litoria wrote: »
    Ha, my mum was a TERRIBLE cook, and her ideas about school lunches, awful. I was about 7 years old, opened my lunch box to find: sandwiches with a filling of sheep brains and mashed pumpkin. This was truly formative...I'm vegan now

    People EAT that? o_o
  • lightenup2016
    lightenup2016 Posts: 1,055 Member
    I would have a bowl of rice crispies, pour an indeterminate amount of sugar over the whole bowl, eat the cereal then use my spoon to scoop the piles of excess sugar in to my mouth.

    Yes!! I was just telling my kids about this, because now I will only sprinkle a tiny amount of sugar on their oatmeal. They couldn't believe I would actually put that much sugar on my cereal when I was young--or that my mom actually let me add my own sugar!! :lol:
  • michael1976_ca
    michael1976_ca Posts: 3,488 Member
    when i was a kid i'd eat beef jerky that was made for the dog
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    My mom used to make Kraft Mac n Cheese from the box...you know what I'm talking about. I'm not sure where the cheese part came in because it's nuclear-orange colored powder. And even though now I make homemade mac and cheese with real grated cheese, sometimes I love me a box of the Kraft!! Comfort food!

    Yes, that was good stuff.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    edited April 2018
    I had forgotten this:

    When I was in college (1973), the dorm where I lived sometimes served a kind of bar cookie called "Poor Richards".

    Working in the cafeteria, I learned - from a full-time food service manager who hired in and refused to serve them - that they were made by taking odd-lot but not spoiled leftovers of other desserts (cakes, cookies, etc.), reducing them to crumbs, pressing them into sheet pans, sprinkling with confectioner's sugar, and serving them.

    They were not popular.
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    try2again wrote: »
    firlena227 wrote: »
    Can't believe no one's mentioned raw cake mix yet... sometimes my sister and I used to eat so much of the mix there wasn't really anything left to bake with! I'd 100% do the same thing now too though.... :)

    Do you mean the dry cake mix or cake batter? The first one frightens me a little ;)

    Commercial dry cake mixes didn't exist when I was growing up (as far as I know). All cake was from home made batter in a bowl.

    Not sure how old you are-- cake mixes have been around since at least the 1930s but their popularity didn't really start rising until after WWII.

    I'm 52, but that's why I inserted "as far as I know". Cultural and geographical differences create a lot of variation. I'm sure I never saw anything like that in my grandparents' kitchens, and they baked OFTEN. My own parents baked a bit less than the grandparents, but I still remember the mixing bowl and all the ingredients being measured in, so that wasn't boxed cake mix either.